h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

At a time when many people are struggling to feed their families and heat their homes it astounds me how many people up spending money to celebrate an imported pseudo traditional commercially motivated festival – gloomy adults and sulky kids are lining up at the tills to buy Halloween customs, decorations, masks and tricks, and sweets treats and even tins of baked beans with “spooky” labels and inflated prices – seems like the supermarkets are tricking customers into treating their shareholders.

With Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas, New Year, Valentines, Mothers Day and Easter commercial interest have stitched up half the year – but they just aren’t trying hard enough surely they need to get bio-consumer units running up bigger debts for the whole twelve month period – it is time for monthly fatuous festivals of consumerism.

Days dedicated to increasingly distant relatives and presents for teachers don’t cut the mustard. In a multi-faith society hijacking more religious festivals could work – companies selling cleaning products would love Holi – but religious types often miss the point and some have an irrational aversion to naked avarice.

I favour a rational approach and a return to the French Revolutionary Calendar, starting in September –

Vendemaire – month of grapes – presents of wine general drumkeness
Brumaire – month of fog – presents of spirits more drunkenness
Fremaire – month of frost – damn its cold mulled wine this month – more drunkenness
Nivose – month of snow – hard one this (consider legalising cocaine?)
Fluviose – month of rain – good excuse for a drink
Ventose – month of wind – move spouts to this festival
Germinal – month of germination – gifts from garden centres
Floreal – month of flowers – good month for florist
Prairial – month of pasture – butchers cash in
Muridor – month of harvest – more gorging
Thurmidor – month of heat – present of swim wear, picnics etc.
Fruitidor – one for the green grocers

.....or perhaps you can do better – any suggestions for new fatuous festivals?

well I was with you

until the sprouts and the swim wear is probably out

The only things imported about Halloween are pumpkins from the new world and costumes made in China. But the customs involved are pretty much as native to Britain or Ireland as it gets. It's often said it was brought over by Americans, but where do you think they got it from in the first place?

Modern Halloween tradition seems to be a variation on the ancient
Xmas rounds of mummers. Dressing in complete disguise, gathering into
groups and visiting all your neighbors far and wide.

"Academics emphasized the mummer’s strangeness: for example, the mummer was a threatening bogey-man-like figure that could be used by parents as a form of social control over children (Firestone 1969; Widdowson 1973). In fact, according to anthropologist Melvin Firestone, mummers and strangers were social equivalents. He argued that both strangers and mummers knocked and their identities were to be determined: “Someone must go to the door to see to them as one would see to a stranger.... Their knocking is a ritual by which they announce their strangeness.” (70). Firestone believed that with unmasking, mummers were transformed from strangers into familiar friends in a dramatic affirmation of community membership. It was a ritual of trust (Palmer and Pomianck 2007). Just as the cockfight was Clifford Geertz’s key text to understanding Balinese culture (Geertz 1971), mummering became central to folklorists and anthropologists in their study of Newfoundland. They embraced it as a metaphor for the Redfieldian “folk community” (Redfield 1960) they sought in rural Newfoundland; yet, it also spoke loudly of the social distance separating non-Newfoundland academics from their subjects."
- quoted from http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/18133/19498

Noted elswhere that this year Americans will spend 7 Billion on Halloween. Second only Xmas.


~jwf~

Hallowe'en is a traditional Irish festival, the only one left, so I'm not going to stop celebrating it just because other people think it is too commercial.

I carve a pumpkin because I can't find turnips big enough (although a sugar beet might be ok) and because they are way easier. If I'd thought about it early enough I'd have got a water melon too.

And it's one of the only times of the year I get to see the people in my village - because of the pumpkin outside the door the children all know they can ring the bell and get some sweets and I can say hello to the parents. (I've only been here 14 years - I'm hopeful that in about 6 years some of the neighbours might actually talk to me)

I used to dislike Halloween about 10 years ago because it seemed to be a licence for oversized teenagers to extort goods from any house they chose, and I can well remember cursing those who didn't bother calling, but just threw eggs at the house instead. However, something has changed since then, and now (around here at least) it is a gentle and likeable affair, where only younger children are chaperoned to only those houses which display pumpkins, and I'm with Sho in thinking it has taken on a very valuable social-introductionary function.

So Americans will spend an average of $22 each on Halloween? Well well.

I think that tucuxii's point was the fatuous commercialisation of Halloween (and others), which does' I think stem from the US. Sure it was 'ours' to start with (although other cultures have a damn good go at similar - The Day of the Dead for example).

The first time I remember seeing Halloween / trick or treating as a dress up and knock on doors asking for swag event was in the film ET.

I'm off out tonight. I won't be playing. And my neighbours regularly get their windows egged because of the location.

PP.

>>my neighbours regularly get their windows egged because of the location.


Are they underneath a giant chicken?

"Sure it was 'ours' to start with" -- If you hadn't seen dressing up and begging for swag before, I doubt it was "yours".

Hallowe'en is an Irish and Scottish custom which spread to America and from there, apparently, to other countries including England.

To be fair, Gnomon, that's only a theory - see The Golden Bough by anthropologist James George Frazer.

Without this link, Halloween as we know it (witches, etc) originated in England in the 19th Century.

When I was young, nobody celebrated Halloween in England, but everyone did in Ireland.

We were invited to Halloween parties by the Scots and Irish families. There were lots of Irish particularly. Because of the We had to dunk for apples and play party games. This was in the 60s. In Suffolk. But generally it wasn't done in England. Gnomon's right.

we always celebrated Halloween in England. Turnip carving, apple bobbing and the like.
We didn't do much in the way of trick or treating though

I know that often things you thought were traditional turn out to be only a recent invention.

For example, Douglas Adams's last novel was published as recently as 1988. In it, one of the characters was an American living in England who was constantly irritated by the fact that nobody in England had ever heard of delivering pizza. Less than 10 years later it was considered perfectly normal. Many traditional songs date back only to the 19th Century.

So if it turned out that Halloween had been invented in England in the 19th Century, I'd be surprised but not amazed.

It would be interesting to try and trace it back to genuine older sources - not just what it says on Wikipedia. Perhaps a trip to Marsh's Library, where most of the books are 18th Century originals, might reveal something.

I'm reading Peter Ackroyd's History of England (yes, just England) and he mentions Samain as being celebrated by the pre-Roman (Iron Age) tribes in England. I doubt if they trick-or-treated though.

I find the book far too much a collection of notes and not the lovely prose I'm used to from Ackroyd. He mentions far too few dates (for my taste) and skims over everything, vaguely mentioning recent archaeological discoveries (like all those skulls in the Thames) but only loosely connecting them to the history. So all it does is give you ideas about what you might want to follow up.

As a result the mention of Samain is a throwaway half-line, with no further details.

"I think that tucuxii's point was the fatuous commercialisation of Halloween (and others), which does' I think stem from the US"

My point exactly - Walmart didn't profit from apple bobbing and scary stories.

"well I was with you........

"until the sprouts" well you could substitute Jerusalem artichokes or a traditional English vindaloo

"and the swim wear is probably out",,,,,what if we add ice cream. Pimms and sangria?